Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story

- Text Size +

Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.

This kind of a what if story. What if a pretender grew up outside the Centre? I hope you all enjoy reading it. Please send your comments and suggestions to Julie_a_1@msn.com I will try to reply to every e-mail



Choices
part 1
By Julie D.





Some times the greatest mysteries in our lives involve our own identities. In my case this is definitely true.

I am twenty-three years old and have been considered an official Jane Doe since I was 71/2 (I now go by Sarah Williams) when I was abandoned at a convent, which supported an all girl’s school. I was left there and was raised by the sisters of St. Catherine’s church in a small town near Portland, MN.

My favorite of the sisters was an old Mexican woman. She was 92 years old when I was left there and taught foreign languages at the school to the day she died 10 years later. She insisted upon being called by the name she had taken when she took her vows. “Hermana Maria Carolina”. If you called her anything else she would simply ignore you. She was a tough teacher and always found a way to challenge her students.

I still look back astounded at how unimpressed she was that I learned more Latin in three days at 8 years old than most students learned in all of their years of study. Instead of being overly impressed as most adults were she told me to sit up straight and enunciate my words properly. When I had mastered one language, she was ready with another. Under her strict eye I translated Plato and Socrates from classic Greek. She taught me not only to read the bible in it’s original language and speak to foreign visitors in their native tongues but continuously seek out new challenges and that no matter how smart I am, I still don’t know everything.

It was she who found me fast asleep in one of the pews and she who taught me to trust both her and God. And it was she who gave me the courage to seek out the mysteries of my past….

********************************************************

“You’re not even trying,” he yelled at me. “Concentrate! Finish your work. Then we’ll take you back to you’re room and you can be left alone.”

“I can’t,” I cried. “It’s too hard.”

I was scared and tired my small five-year-old body shook from fear and exhaustion. I wanted to be left alone. Mr. Raines’ hand began to rise and was ready to strike, when suddenly I saw behind him that Jared was running towards us to stop him. Jared was nearly there when out of no where Mr. Lyle came out from behind him and shot Jarod in the head. Jarod’s dying body collapsed and Mr. Lyle pointed the revolver at me and just as he was about to pull the trigger I woke up in a sweat.

It was an old nightmare. When I had first been left at St. Catherine’s I had such dreams several times a night. Now sixteen years later, it was the only one by which I was regularly haunted. I am twenty-three now and have spent the last five years searching for my past my family and my true name.

I was born on the twenty-seventh sublevel of a research corporation know as the center from a surrogate mother who I can only assume was killed shortly after my birth. I was raised and trained to do research for the corporation using the special “pretender” abilities with which I was born. On one particular day when I was about four years day I had refused to do anything I was told and Mr. Raines had chased me when I ran away from him to avoid being beaten.

I was running down a hallway in a part of the Centre to which I had never been. I suddenly felt myself being pulled into one of the air vents and my captor let me go to put the screen back behind us. He then took me in one arm and turned a few corners before putting me down. I looked up at him and realized that it was Angelo who had often sat silently next to my bed while I slept. Angelo led me up one passageway and down another. He carried me up ladders and eventually left me in the air vent, which led directly into Jarod’s room.

I remember lying down on the cold metal floor of the air vent and crying silently. All of a sudden the vent cover next to me was being removed and Jarod was with me holding me in his arms while I cried myself to sleep. I woke the next day in my own bed. I remember Jared later telling me that Angelo had come back and shown him the way back to my room. It was the first of my many trips to Jarod’s room over the next few years. Before long I knew the way myself and went to Jarod whether Angelo came for me or not. Jarod always offered me his love and comfort whenever I was with him.

The last time I went to Jarod’s room is a night I will never forget. I had once again refused to do a simulation and Mr. Raines had beaten me badly. That night I told Jarod that I wanted to kill Mr. Raines. He had left me with a black eye and a broken cheekbone. I cried no tears that night. Instead I raged until I fell asleep from exhaustion.

I woke to find myself being carried in Jarod’s arms. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“Quiet. Don’t Talk”, Jarod whispered sharply.

I was silent and wondering where we were going in what my body was telling must still be the middle of the night. We went up ladders and through air vents until there were strange lights above me, and something unseen brushed up against my skin.

“You see that”, Jarod asked whispering and pointing at the largest of the lights above us? “That’s the moon, and the other lights are stars.” I realized suddenly that for the first time in my young life I was outside.

Jarod carried me quickly to the parking lot and put me in a car. He cut a few wires and started driving. I fell asleep as we drove and the next thing I remember is Jarod lying me on the pew and telling me to wait for someone to wake up. He put a blanket on me and was gone. Out of my life for good.

Over the last few years I have discovered many details of my life not the least of which was that there was an explosion and fire in the part of SL-27 where I lived the same night that Jarod carried me away from The Centre. Jarod had gone back and made sure they would never look for me. Official and not so official records all read that I was killed in an accidental explosion.

I didn’t understand at the time why he risked himself for me, or why he didn’t take the opportunity to escape himself. Now I do. Because Jarod sacrificed himself for me I have witnessed the beauty which abides in the human spirit. I have seen kindness such as I would never known existed if I had remained at The Centre. I have also seen acts of cruelty and vengeance. It is our choice which part of ourselves to reveal and Jarod wanted to make sure that I made the right choice and could see that under the influence of The Centre I was going to make the wrong one. I am eternally grateful to him.

Jarod escaped the Centre two years ago and I hope that one day he will pass my way.

********************************************************************

It has been two years since I wrote down my memories of my passed and I have continued to seek out the identity of my biological parents and finally I have found them. I am to meet them in the Church at St. Catherine’s in five minutes. I sit now in the pew where at 71/2 years old I lay frightened at the prospect of facing a new and unknown world. I am nervous and wish that Hermana Maria Carolina were sitting beside me as she had throughout my childhood.

My mother is here. She looks uncomfortable in church, but she is beautiful to me. Her mid length brown hair and dark suit with the collar of her blue shirt pulled over the jacket collar. She is looking at me but looks away when I look up. Her high heeled boots make noise on the stones of the floor and she looks as if she is unsure what to do I rise and walk over to her. I give her a hug and she stiffens.

Behind her my father has come. I release my mother and run to my father. He returns my hug just as my mother turns around and exclaims, “Jarod!”

“Hello, Miss Parker,” my father responds. “Why don’t we sit down.” He suggested

That is probably a good idea since my mother looks like she is about to black out. We all move to a pew and sit down with me in the middle. Jarod begins to explain to my mother how this came to be.

“When you were a teenager,” he begins. “Your father saw you beginning to drift away both from himself and from The Centre. He thought that if you had a child being kept at The Centre, than he could ensure that you would never leave. He drugged you and extracted your eggs when you were fourteen. He also wanted the child to be pretender so they also stole my sperm. They created embryos and inserted them into a surrogate. Sarah was the only survivor. Your father intended to use Sarah as a hostage. To force you to stay at the Centre forever, but in 1982 I changed his plans. I started a fire in her room and brought her here to St. Catherine’s in honor of your mother’s attempt to rescue us.”

“My father”, Miss Parker begins, “Would never…. He would never do that to me.” Her voice is irritated and arrogant, but I can tell that even she does not believe her own words. She knows that Jarod is telling the truth.

We talk for an hour. The three of us together. Then Jarod gets up to leave. He gives me a hug and says goodbye promising that one day we will see each other again. He looks at Miss Parker and then turns around and walks out the door. Leaving me behind once again. Miss Parker stays a little longer, but we sit in silence. The spell of togetherness and bonding has left with Jarod and neither one of us know what to say. Miss Parker starts to get up to go. I give her another hug and this time she returns it although a little stiffly. No words pass between us. There is nothing to be said. We are mother and daughter but we can not openly acknowledge it or we trap each other at the Centre forever even if neither of us is locked up by them we will be running from them possibly for the rest of our lives.

I watch my mother walk slowly down the isle and watch her walk out the door as I had watched my father do just a few minutes ago.

Part of me still wants revenge. Wants to hurt and kill the people at The Centre who have ripped so many lives apart. But then there is the other side, which tells me to watch out for ways to save their other victims and leave those who have harmed me to God’s justice. It is my choice to make and I make it anew every day. For the sake of those who have given up their time, energy, and freedom to save me from my own bitterness, I hope that I continue to make the right decision.









You must login (register) to review.